086: Why You Should Quit Your Job

Do you come home from work every day completely drained? Is your creative energy zapped when you get off work? Are you completely unmotivated to work on the side projects of your passion? You’re probably in the wrong day job.

The key is a day job you don’t hate. It’s not going to be your favorite thing to do, but it can’t be something that drains you creatively. If you hate your day job, you need to quit. You probably already know that and just haven’t pulled the trigger yet. We’re here to motivate you and help you through the many struggles associated with quitting.

I’m not talking about being foolish. I’m talking about making a calculated risk and going all in with the things you love. Let’s take the dive.

Self employment rewards you more greatly in the long run if you have a willingness to
A) simplify.
B) work hard.
C) focus on the long term.

05:42 That draining feeling could be coming from the job and not the work. The job is the context in which you work. It includes bosses, employees, clients, customers, cultures, environments, tasks, managers, and workloads. It might not be the work that drains you but the context of the job.

Many people get to the end of every day completely exhausted and drained. They often assume that everyone experiences the same thing and that’s just how it is. “That’s work.”

06:56 But it doesn’t have to be that way. Jobs don’t have to be that way, and work shouldn’t be that way. We’re not built to sit around, we’re built to work, and make things, and do things! We’re made to be fulfilled in our work.

07:55 If you’ve answered yes to the earlier questions, then you’re in the wrong day job.

The Right Kind of Day Job

08:20 The purpose of the day job is to support you. It’s to support the exploration and pursuit of your passion and growing that organically (without compromise) to the point where you can make a living from it. The day job is supposed to pay your bills and cover your expenses.

10:57 I don’t want to define that for you, I just want to get you the ammunition to discover that for yourself:

You need to be in a day job that doesn’t drain you.

You need to be in a day job that doesn’t zap you of the creative energy you need to pursue your passion when you get home from work.

11:23 Don’t try to make the day job more than it should be. Many people have a well-paying day job that they don’t want to quit even if they hate it. It’s called golden handcuffs.

11:55 You need to rethink the idea of the day job. The goal of the day job is not to get a bunch of money, it’s to cover your expenses.

12:04 Define what your expenses are. Let yourself go to Starbucks a couple times a month if you want, that’s fine. But try to identify the wasters. If you’re coming home every night and watching 3 hours of tv shows, maybe cancel the Hulu and Netflix subscriptions. Save time, save money. Two birds with one stone.

If you’re working 40 hours a week at your day job and making twice what you need to cover expenses, it might make sense to scale back and refocus your efforts.

14:41 You have to be willing to think about the long term. Your time is worth more invested in the future of your passion than it is in the short term returns you get exchanging it for money.

15:03 Self employment will reward you more greatly in the long run if you have the right kind of mindset:

19:48 The trust can’t be in a job—it needs to be a trust in each other.

20:24 When you have short-term view and you’re looking to tomorrow instead of to next year, or 10 years from now, you limit yourself. You limit yourself to trusting in the things that will satiate that short-term vision.

24:19“What about when you’re married and you’re in a job already and your spouse has their sense of security wrapped up in a job that you have?”

24:39 You need to satiate some of those concerns. Yes, you want trust even more than an understanding, but you want to try to satiate any concerns you can. Define everything possible:

What’s the point if we’re not going to take a calculated risk on what we love?

When are we going to do this?

When are you ok with trusting me to invest some of what we’ve saved?

Name a savings figure that you agree on as being “enough” to make the leap.

What are our expenses going to be?

How long are we going to try this until we decide that it’s not working?

What does “not working” look like?

Are you going to quit it completely?

Are you going to scale back?

Are you going to go back to the day job?

Is that day job the same one you left?

27:45“But how can I know this is going to work?” Guess what? You’re never going to know if anything is going to work—ever. Stop trying to get 100% sure that this thing you’re going to do is THE thing you’ll do for the rest of your life. SPOILER ALERT: It’s probably not.

28:15 Be willing to pivot. Constantly reevaluate what you’re doing, and whether it’s what you want to be doing. If not, start making steps in the right direction to change that.

32:19 The wrong type of people will help you find excuses and reasons not to pursue your passion. The right type of people will help move you toward pursuing your passion and move you toward providing the kind of value that you’re capable of.

34:24 You know how your parents told you growing up that you’ll think like the people you’re around? Garbage in, garbage out? Remember how you said, “Yeah, whatever. That’s not me, I just hang out with these guys… I just listen to these people… I just watch these shows… I just download these podcasts…”

34:42 All of this stuff that you’re letting come into your mind, you will start to believe. Whatever you put in you will start to regurgitate.

35:02 You need to think about who you’re around and who you allow in your life:

Do those people have debt?

Are those people happy?

Are they the ones always complaining on Facebook?

35:16 These are the people telling you to stay in this crappy job and not to pursue your passion? Why are you listening to them?

36:23 What’s hard is when those people are your family. They want the best for you, but they want what’s best for you from their own limited perspective:they want the facade of safety for you.

Some of the greatest things in life require risk. If you’re too safe, you’re never going to be able to experience those things.

37:24 I’m not talking about being foolish, I’m saying that it’s going to require taking a leap.

37:28 Look at the lives of the people that are giving you advice and ask yourself if you should be listening to them.

38:06 This is coming from someone with zero debt. Everything I’ve done has been bootstrapped. I’ve never borrowed money. Just think about the things that you’re allowing to come into your life and the people you’re listening to—look at their lives. Don’t just take their advice at face value.